Now hope, your sipped liqueur and our gulped wine,

Promising us unearned your blessing-power

When you are beautiful in your high blessing-hour,

Still tricks the loneliness and love

Of hearts which need you, tricks us to your tower.

That little contract which you had with death,

His casual subclause with its fine-print “dust,”

Hope hid this from us like amnesia. Now

We stand here so terribly shattered,

So shattered by death which made your tower a mound.

Hope-swilling on pneumatic cushions, you-ward

Bus loads of priests and lovers come,

Town-pent and pale as toward a picnic ground,

Begging your blessing like good picnic weather,

Living your sainthood like a week-end.

They hoped to lounge on kindness as on lawns;

But finding only death’s “No Trespass” sign,

All stand here shy, ungainly now,

Wanting so terribly hard to help you help them,

Wanting to help but never knowing how.